


Oneiromancy for Modern Times

by obsolete_theory (ersatzbeta)



Category: Weiß Kreuz
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-08
Updated: 2014-10-08
Packaged: 2018-02-20 09:42:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2424056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ersatzbeta/pseuds/obsolete_theory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Schuldig walks into the bar in Yohji's head. He knows exactly what he's looking for and exactly what he'll find.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oneiromancy for Modern Times

**Author's Note:**

> This was written this summer for the weissvsaiyuki battle on LJ. I'm finally getting around to posting it here. ^_^

Schuldig walks into the bar in Yohji's head. It's crowded with ex-lovers, teammates, friends, and a scattering of blurry dark beasts. Schuldig snorts. Even in his mind Yohji thinks of his kills in terms of putting an animal down. That doesn't stop them from bleeding on the dance floor. Red and black and grey strobe through the room, part color sense, part memory, and all delicious angst.

 

Schuldig knows what he's looking for. There, in the center, where the light doesn't reach. Honey hair flashes, and Schuldig can taste how sweet Yohji's thoughts are.

 

Schuldig elbows the first two memories out of the way (a one night-stand, leaning against the tiled wall of the men's room at a gay bar while Yohji catches his breath; a woman from Liott who'd looked good in a bikini at the time but is now how Yohji thought of her: old, worn out, and dead, bruises draping around her neck like jewelry.)

 

The crowd parts around Schuldig after that like the fucking red sea did for Moses. Schuldig smiles at the cowering shadows. He’s not like them, and these fractured memories know it. Yohji knows it.

 

Yohji's mind--so accommodating, so suggestive even now--tunes into Schuldig and, slowly, the murmurs and the laughing phase into the sound of rolling breakers. The surf hisses, back and forth with the people around Schuldig, and the tang of salt water hits Schuldig hard.

 

Yohji's mind is powerful when he sleeps. Most dreamers only manage to fill in for one sense at a time, can switch off between two in an intense sequence--images and sound, say, or sound and scent. But here Yohji is tapping into three and four.

 

Fascinating, for a normal. Intoxicating. Schuldig is helplessly drawn in now, just like every other time. When he brushes a hand against Yohji's dream-hair, it feels more than real.

 

Yohji turns around. God he looks good. Better than the last time Schuldig saw him in person. In reality, Yohji is drowning. His hair is short now and his body is slowly wasting away from neglect, and he wouldn't recognize Schuldig if Schuldig came up behind him and fucked him. Schuldig is still furious that Yohji let himself be mind-wiped by an amateur with a chemistry set.

 

Here, in the dream, Yohji is golden and strong.

 

"Do I know you?" says Yohji.

 

Half-recognition flashes in his eyes, but the memories stay buried. It hurts Schuldig like glass shards.

 

"No," says Schuldig. "Wanna dance?"

 

Yohji shrugs, slinky, like a tomcat on the prowl.

 

"Sure," he says. "Watch out for the blood."

 

Schuldig plasters himself against Yohji and they sway back and forth, easy, like waves rolling in to the shore.

 

They'd danced once, for real, when Yohji was bombed out of his head and Schuldig used a little glamour to make Yohji not recognize him. It had been hot and sweaty and had left Schuldig craving more, had left him hard and wanting, but of course Yohji's brain had interpreted him as a woman, which meant that Yohji didn't want to take him home in case he snapped and tried to strangle him.

 

Schuldig wouldn't have minded. It could have been hot.

 

(He'd jerked it for two weeks thinking about Yohji's hands around his throat and the marks he'd leave behind.)

  
  


Here in Yohji's head, they have danced a hundred times at least. Not that Yohji remembers it in the waking world. Even here, in his dreams, he doesn't recognize Schuldig, though Schuldig looks the same each time Yohji sees him.

 

That is interesting, too. Yohji gives Schuldig a shape to wear, the same shape, night after night. It makes Schuldig crazy that Yohji doesn't know him, yet knows the touch of his mind enough to change how Schuldig looks in the dreamscape.

 

Schuldig has suspected, for a long time, that Yohji has some latent telepathy, although he’s never put his hunch to any real test. Yohji's mind is unusually clear and strong and vivid. (It had taken a month for Schuldig to destroy the feelings for Neu (for Asuka) that Yohji passed on while Schuldig was imprinting the minds of Weiss so he could know them anywhere. Disgusting, at the time, knowing Neu like that, but interesting now at this distance of some years.)

 

It had been professional that Schuldig has stalked Ran in particular and Weiss in general, but it was purely personal interest that he had also stalked Yohji. So easy when the kittens lived and worked so closely with one another.

 

It was more difficult to keep up while handling the misfits of class Z and doing damage control for the school. Schuldig couldn't get physically close enough to do more than walk through the shadows of Yohji's sleep. He did his best to wipe Tsuji out of Yohji's subconscious and out of his own, but didn't succeed entirely. Yohji had found her attractive and Schuldig hated her for it, aside and apart from all her other stupidities. He dyed his hair green anyways, just in case, then realized how dumb that was and dyed it back an even brighter orange than his natural color.

 

And now Yohji lives a brainwashed, ridiculous, domestic lie, and Schuldig has no part in his life, even to stalk. Schuldig hasn’t seen Yohji in person in years. (Yohji’s neighbors are such boring people. It isn’t hard to convince them to do whatever he wants, especially if what he wants is for them to check on Yohji.)

 

It isn't the kind of life Yohji deserves. Yohji needs danger and lust and angst and _more_ than his waking life holds.

 

But in his sleep…

  
  


Schuldig's hair is like fire here, red and orange and yellow all at once, spiky and curling close at the forehead, short like Yohji's is in real life, while Yohji’s dream hair spills down past his shoulders and is the exact honey color Schuldig remembers from the old days.

 

Yohji's hair brushes against Schuldig's shoulders and neck while they sway together.

 

He still dresses like a hooker cowboy, even in his dreams, which makes Schuldig laugh.

 

"Hmm?" says Yohji. "Something funny?"

 

"It's nothing," says Schuldig. "I like your hat, that's all."

 

For a few minutes, they move, in sync, to the idea of a song that Yohji had heard when he was young. A jumble of notes hang in the air, then fall. The lights around them brighten; they're no longer at the epicenter of a void, and all the people in the room look to them.

 

Yohji notices, and the room twists from a nice little dance to something worse. Schuldig feels a nightmare pressing down on Yohji like a thunderstorm.

 

"You're dreaming," says Schuldig. "You can wake yourself up whenever you want."

 

He says it as much to Yohji as to himself.

 

"It feels real," says Yohji.

 

Yohji thinks that he deserves whatever he dreams, but that’s part of his dream, too. The words float in the air like smoke.

 

The lights in the bar strobe in blue and red, cycling through in a way that makes Schuldig sick to his stomach, even if it is all in his head. He could stop the dream if he wanted, if Yohji wanted him to. But ending the dream would mean saying goodbye to Yohji, and Schuldig has only just gotten here.

 

Yohji starts to bleed from his nose, thick and slow. The blood doesn't dry up, doesn't slow down, doesn't hit the floor. Instead it thins into a shining, red wire that starts to coil itself around Yohji's neck. It hints at bondage and screams of garrotings Yohji has performed for Kritiker. The wire coils around Schuldig’s wrist and leaves a dark smear behind which looks like chocolate and smells like iron and ozone.

 

Schuldig knows it isn't real, but he still wants to cut the blood-wire from Yohji.

 

This is exactly why Schuldig wishes he had never gotten involved with the seductive trap of Yohji's mind. Yohji makes him soft. Even now, out from under the yoke of Essett, Schuldig can’t be soft. Yohji makes him want things that, ten years ago, he would have laughed himself sick about. If anyone had said to him that these dreams would be what he wanted the most, he would have laughed and then killed the person who suggested it.

 

Not world domination. Not freedom. This.

 

Schuldig sighs, and the wire lets go of him. He backs off from Yohji and hits up the imaginary bar. The bartender is some dead guy Schuldig has never met before--one of Yohji’s kills if the bruising around the neck is any indication.

 

He takes the glass he's given and drinks. Looks like beer, tastes like cigarette smoke (Yohji's brand) and the first time he'd had lemonade on his own; an early, autonomous Rozenkreuz mission where he'd killed a man with his mind, squeezed it like a lemon until his thoughts burst and faded and Schuldig had gotten a lemonade in the few precious minutes between the kill and being collected by a handler. Schuldig has had a taste for lemonade ever since.

God. Fucking subconscious dream beer. Schuldig shakes his head and drinks it anyway. The bartender pours him another, and Schuldig looks over at Yohji.

Yohji is completely covered with wire. It's taken him over. To Schuldig's experienced eye, Yohji looks more like one of Masafumi's creatures tonight, one of the ones that died before it was properly hatched from its tank. Fundamentally flawed.  Yohji looks skinned, red, glistening meat protecting his bones from the air.

He looks like he should be dead.

Yohji shambles on the dancefloor. He sprawls and lurches, his limbs lengthening and lashing like whips to catch the dancing memories between his red hands. Every time Yohji touches a memory-person, the blood reaches out and swallows them, pulls them into his chest. There is a moment of silence, and then little bubbles burst like gunfire, spewing out skin and hair and screams.

The mass of red around Yohji grows bigger and more aggressive, reaching farther and faster as it drags the memories in. Wires sing through the air, discordant.

How charming.

Yohji is terrible company tonight.

Truthfully, he’s terrible company every night.

Schuldig has seen this horror show a hundred times, but he doesn't stop coming into Yohji's sleeping brain. He drinks the beer and sits at the bar and waits for Yohji to finish.

 

Yohji has a lot of memories to eat.

 

At last, the inside of Yohji’s head is empty. The lights are dim and the music has long since faded out. Yohji has consumed everyone but Schuldig. He has devoured every shoe, every scarf, every bead of sweat and drop of dream-blood the memories have. Schuldig has drunk all there is to drink because it’s like drinking air. You can’t get drunk in a dream.

It’s a good thing, too, because (right on schedule) the floors start to slant.  Schuldig sits and waits as the seat he’s on moves towards Yohji, a compass needle to north. Slow, then faster, and then the stool breaks apart and Schuldig falls to the floor, is brought skidding to Yohji’s feet.

Schuldig knows exactly how this will play out.

He is long past resenting the theatrics. He is past resignation. After so many times, Schuldig feels nothing but anticipation as he looks up at Yohji. The floors are warm tonight. It’s a tiny change, but it is a change. Maybe, just maybe, Yohji will remember this time.

There is no recognition in Yohji’s eyes, and the wire is just as careless as ever as it wraps around him and lifts him up, preparing to pull him into Yohji. He is wrapped tight and the wires press them almost chest to chest. Schuldig feels a space there, sucking at him.

Then, they touch.

A great wind rushes through Schuldig. He cannot breathe, but the wind moves through him like there’s a hole inside him that sends air gusting up the whole length of his spine, cold and dry and pulling.

Schuldig wishes Yohji could finish it. He wishes Yohji could break him, wishes Yohji could break himself and put himself back together.

Schuldig can feel all the memories inside Yohji, even the ones that Yohji doesn’t know are there, still locked up tight with chemicals that taste of Tsuji. Those ones are deep, deep inside.

The wind stops. The wires loosen.

Schuldig looks at Yohji, who looks at him like he’s seeing him for the first time. (The fucking irony…)

"I should have swallowed you," says Yohji. "Why?"

Yohji presses forward like he expects to melt through Schuldig, like he expects Schuldig will become a part of him if he just tries a little harder.

The wind blows again, but Schuldig remains. The locked memories have shifted, inched a little closer. The skin of Schuldig’s belly is hot against Yohji.

Yohji’s eyes are clear and bright for the first time. Lucid.

Schuldig almost dares to hope.

"I know you," says Yohji. " I don't remember your name, or what you look like, but I know you."

He stares at Schuldig like he has x-ray vision. Schuldig feels himself being recorded, memorized, analyzed. His stomach churns.

The certainty passes; Yohji's lucid dreaming is over.

"Don't I?" says Yohji. “Don’t I know you, from somewhere?”

Yohji’s eyes are vacant.

"Ssh," says Schuldig.

Schuldig wants to scream when he feels the memories retreating--he could almost taste them, _Yohji could almost taste them_ and now...nothing. He lays a hand on Yohji’s cheek and feels the confusion twisting there, tart and green.

 

Schuldig kisses Yohji then.

And, like a hundred nights before, Yohji merges into him, through lips and tongue and the fluttering touch of their dream skins.

Schuldig pours everything into the kiss, shares his memories with Yohji, shares the taste of secrets with him and the sensation of dancing and the slow, sweet drip of honey and the sound of a gun going off and what Schuldig imagines it would feel like if Yohji started to remember.

 

Schuldig pulls away and wishes bitterly that he could feel Yohji’s lips in the dream. He can feel the rest of it, but that kiss is a black hole. There’s nothing there. If he could try again, surely...

One kiss is not enough.

It's not enough.

It's all Schuldig and Yohji have. Schuldig knows Yohji won't remember it in the morning, and Schuldig will. He will come back tomorrow night, or next week, or six months from now, and Yohji's head will be exactly the same. They'll dance the same dance, struggle across the same dancefloor, kiss the exact same kiss. It’s hypnotic, intoxicating, and absolute frustration.

Yohji blinks twice--his pupild contract to pinpoints, then expand again in the dark.

Just like that, Yohji resets himself.

The lights above the bar blink on, and the music comes slowly back, the same song, over and over. People start entering the club again, memories and thoughts and other dreams. No blood, no wires, no raging subconscious monsters. It’s all exactly how it was when Schuldig entered the dream.

“Hey,”says Yohji. “You want to dance?”

Yohji’s eyes flash with enticement. Hooker cowboy, on the prowl. His lips look very, very real and very, very soft. The lights come on over the dancefloor. Yohji’s hair shines honey-gold.

Schuldig shakes his head.

“I’ve got to go,” he says. “Sweet dreams, loverboy.”

Before Yohji tries to convince him to stay and have a not-real drink and a not-real dance, Schuldig reaches into Yohji’s brain and shoves him towards deeper sleep. He wipes the club and the dreams and all Yohji’s worries away.

  
As Yohji slips beyond the fringes REM sleep, Schuldig leaves.


End file.
